Urban Alternatives House

This intermittent blog has tried to chronicle work on making the Urban Alternatives House (UAH) a real entity in the community.  We were getting very close.  Design and engineering work had laid out how we should proceed and the financial package was coming together.  A meeting was planned for today to work on a draft for a Design/Build RFP that was to be released at the end of the month.   As most of you know we were stopped in our tracks by a devastating fire the consumed the Jackson Hardy House and the Urban Alternatives House on Sunday morning.  The Carriage Town Neighborhood lost their beautiful house that many members had loving restored.  We lost the property that was to become the UAH. Check out the video report from abc 12 from yesterday.

http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=7731098

So where do we go from here?  Provost Voland is committed to working with us to find new opportunities to meet the objectives of the UAH project and I will continue to keep the UAH ideas of alternative energy, local food, sustainable lifestyles and a commitment to revitalization in Flint alive for our students.  Earth and Resource Science is a starting a new major in Energy and Sustainable Systems so we will also advocate for projects that move the campus and the community along a sustainable path.

Thanks to everyone who worked to make the Urban Alternatives House happen over the last several years and the many of you who have been in touch since the fire.  I will be in touch when we have a new road map forward.

And to show that these projects can happen check out the link about the Kettering University grant to install solar-powered heating at the Youth Karate Ka Harvesting Earth Farm on Flint’s north side.  Dora and Jacky King are growing produce and training a new generation of urban farmers.   This will make them even better!

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2010/10/post_146.html

HR

In Fall 2009 Renee Zientek and I worked with Janet Lorch’s class to come up with a  logo and promotional materials for the Urban Alternatives House (UAH).  I talked about this in earlier post.  Adam Alberts produced the design that we selected and we use the logo in the blog and the UAH Facebook page.

Adam and Janet have been recognized on the website Design Ignites Change which is sponsored by Adobe and Worldstudio.  Check out Adams designs for posters and tee shirts using the tag line “Finding New Ways”.  “Finding New Ways”  is also used the logo and embodies what the UAH project is all about.

Adam”s UAH designs on “Design Ignites Change”

The next big project task in preparing the garden site for a new design and integration with the first floor learning environment was removal of the large “Tree of Heaven” stems that border the site on the north and west.  Once the old basement was removed and a stable site established the City of Flint forestry crew cut down the trees in the second week of June.  Some were downed directly and others were trimmed prior to felling.  I wasn’t around at the site when the trimming was going on.  Once the trees were down the demolition crew was back on site to dig up the stumps and remove the logs and stump debris.   The site was then graded and a silt fence installed to limit run off down slope to the south.

Check out the link below the photos for a slide show of the clearing and basement removal process.

Tree removal on the UAH Garden Site

Work on the garden site at the UAH is in progress.  A Land Bank crew cleared the site in April and during May and June the City of Flint demolition team removed the old basement that was buried at the site.  Fences came down first, then the basement walls were broken up and removed along with other debris that had been folded into the old basement.   The site was graded and prepared for the trucks to drive on site for tree removal; the next step in the process.   Here a couple of before and after photos.  Check out the link below the photos for a slide show of the clearing and basement removal process.

The UAH in June 2009

The UAH in June 2010

Slide show of the clearing and basement removal process

So it is really time to catch up on progress at the Urban Alternatives House. 

The charrette and the follow up technical work at the end of 2009 and into the first months of 2010 resulted in a preliminary plan for a “green” renovation of the house.  It would garner a silver rating in the LEED for Homes scheme if we implemented all of the plan.  For details take a look at the summary that we prepared.  Recommendations.  A full document with all the technical information is in preparation.

The completion of the plan was accompanied with a budget which allowed us to initiate a discussion about how we fund implementation and make the project happen.  This is a complex process but I think we are making progress.  I can’t report on just how we are trying to pull this together at the moment for reasons of confidentiality and also because it is a very fluid process.   There are a couple of other planning tasks associated with potential funding sources but the first round of planning is almost complete.

I have been away from the blog for several months and a lot has happened in our planning for the Urban Alternatives House (UAH). We now have a plan for moving forward and I will talk about this on the blog in the next few days.

What I want to share with you immediately is an exciting new partnership we are developing with our next door neighbor – Hoffman’s Deco Deli & Cafe. The plan is to use the UAH garden to grow vegetables and salads that can be used in Hoffman’s sandwiches. There are lots of details to work out but we talked about the idea yesterday at a press conference that was held at Hoffman’s. It was held prior to the lunch time talk on campus at the Critical Issues Forum by Dr. David Kessler who is Professor of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco and was previously the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner for both President Bush (the first) and President Clinton. He has just written a provocative book on food called “The End of Overeating” and it highlights the value of fresh local food.

Check out the Channel 12 report on the project and a Washington Post review of Dr. Kessler’s book.

Hoffman’s Deli press conference

Kessler book review

I was privileged to work with a large group of community stakeholders under the leadership of the Flint Area Reinvestment Office and the City of Flint to help in the preparation of a grant request to the Department of Energy for funding a range of innovative energy efficiency projects.  The proposal was prepared under very tight time constraints by a talented team from Resource Recycling Systems.   The request was $36million with a leverage of $205million.  Competition for these federal funds is fierce but an impressive coalition was created in Flint and the projects in the areas of Institutional Efficiency, Neighborhood Retrofitting and Financing, Greenhouse Gas Management, Cultural Leadership and Promotion and Outreach can have a transforming impact.  Work is now oriented to advocating for the project at all levels.

The Urban Alternatives House was included in the package as an Energy and Community Partner.  The link details the elements of the proposal and the structure of the grant.

Janet Lorch’s Corporate Identity/Business Graphics class has been working on ideas for the Urban Alternatives House (UAH) throughout the Fall semester.  They have collectively developed a whole range of innovative designs and strategies to market the UAH.  Earlier we selected a logo and tag line for the project developed by Adam Alberts and he has now created a brochure,  some signs and promotion items.  Please take a look – they are great (I can’t include the full package because of file size limitations).  The other students in the class also developed full graphic and promotional packages.    I will post some examples of other student work later because some great ideas were created.

Another group of students in Kathy Lookingland’s web design class have developed some preliminary designs for a UAH web site.  This work was not a full class project but again there were some intriguing ideas that may be more fully developed next semester.

We had a very successful design charrette for the Urban Alternatives House on December 4 with 55 people for the opening review.  Jeff Remtema the Director to Sustainability for Progressive AE in Grand Rapids conducted the session after progress reports from our technical team; Shannon White (THA Architects), Joe Schwartz (Strategic Energy System) and Shaun Smakel (Rowe).

The charrette participants worked on four topics: Land and Water, Energy, Materials and Design and Healthy Homes using key questions to direct the process and a detailed recording of ideas.  There was a diversity of ideas in each of the groups that is difficult to summarize but using a suite of alternative energy options and linking the first floor learning environment with the outdoor spaces were threads in many of the discussions.  Jeff has written a summary of the ideas from each of the five groups that worked through the process.

The Urban Alternatives House Design Charrette will be held on Friday, December 4 in the C.S. Mott Conference Room (turn right through the double doors after you enter using the main entrance on Saginaw Street).  Our technical team will be there to talk about the progress we are making on the house design, the energy alternatives and the landscape plan.  Hope to see you there.

The C.S Mott Foundation Building is on the corner of Saginaw Street and 1^st (see map below).  For those of you who are familiar with the UM-Flint campus it is the large building on Saginaw immediately south of the parking lot in front of the University Pavilion.

The conference room is on the first floor in the Commerce Center part of the building.  If you enter through the main door, turn right through the double doors and turn left to access the conference facility.

See you tomorrow.

HR